Movie Review: The Man in the Basement

Simon (Jérémie Renier) is living with his wife Hélène and daughter Justine (Victoria Eber) in a Paris apartment that has belonged to his Jewish family for several generations (aside from a brief period during the Nazi occupation when it was seized), and technically is still co-owned by his mother Nelly (Denise Chalem) and brother David (Jonathan Zaccaï). The flat also comes with a guest bedroom on a higher floor and a storage unit in the building’s basement, which he is selling on his family’s behalf to raise a little extra money for David. A man named Jacques (François Cluzet) is the first to come and see the space and immediately declares that it’s perfect for his needs, but still manages to talk down the asking price from $10,000 to $9,000. Simon gets his lawyer to draw up a contract declaring his intent to sell, and he and Jacques sign it at a second meeting where Jacques then convinces the all-too-agreeable Simon to accept the payment in full on the spot, effectively finalizing the sale before the actual transferal of the deed has taken place.

Much to the dismay of the staff and other residents of the apartment building, it turns out that Jacques was lying about why he wanted the storage room and has taken up residence inside it. They complain to Simon about the situation, and he heads downstairs to take it up with the man but finds himself taking pity upon his situation and agrees to let him stay in his guestroom for a few weeks. But other things about Jacques’ story begin to feel suspicious and so Simon looks into his past only to discover that in fact he is a Holocaust denier with a fairly sizable following online. He immediately wants to rescind the sale before it goes all the way through but discovers that it is too late and that he will instead have to allow the matter to work its way through the less-than-expeditious legal system.

Despite not being Jewish herself, his wife seems to take these developments worse than Simon does, and his mother and brother are particularly incensed, insisting that they get a new lawyer who might settle the matter more aggressively. In fact, pretty much everyone in Simon’s life begins making sure he knows that they do not approve of the way he is handling things, all while Jacques begins waging a campaign of harassment against him. The pressure from all sides pushes him closer and closer to his breaking point and then he discovers that his daughter has begun to take an interest in the man’s teachings.

Writer / director Philippe Le Guay (with co-writers Gilles Taurand and Marc Weitzmann) has taken the classic thriller formula of movies like Don’t Rock the Cradle and Single White Female, in which an innocent seeming stranger inserts themselves into an unsuspecting person’s life before turning out to be dangerous, and uses it to look at the ways that insidious ideas when left unchecked can violently disrupt seemingly stable environments. Perhaps more notably though, it zeroes in on how people’s reactions to these ideas and those who spread them can also contribute to that disruption.

To be clear, the filmmakers never make Jacques’ baseless claims look correct and they certainly don’t portray him as a saint, but they do allow him to be human, with Cluzet switching adeptly between coldly calculating and pitiably afraid. It is everyone else who so quickly escalates to threats of violence with David and Hélène especially outraged, the latter seemingly as a way of overcompensating for her own sense of guilt over her father’s mildly racist behavior. Simon tries to keep everyone calm by taking on as much of the burden himself as he can, but that isn’t good for his own mental health and leads to his family distrusting him and accusing him of keeping secrets from them. All of which leaves Justine ignored and left to sort things out on her own as she watches her family fracture before her eyes while also dealing with a romantic rejection.

Le Guay smartly weaves all of this together to keep the tension high throughout, often using handheld cameras to make the viewer feel like they are in the room with the cast. Occasional horror movie trappings like eerie shots of the basement hallways and Bruno Coulais’ classic-thriller-inspired score keep the audience uneasy about what might happen next as we head towards whatever tragedy awaits the characters. It can sometimes be hard not to feel like everyone not listening to Simon is the chief cause of much of what happens, even if the initial sale to Jacques was his fault, but that also makes his increased agitation and mania all the more believable (as does Renier’s deft performance). The Man in the Basement is not without its flaws, but it is an entertaining and suspenseful little film that speaks volumes to much of today’s world and will likely spark some very animated conversations. ★★★★